Thursday, May 17, 2007

Good and Bad Along the Charles River

This morning, I ran past the newly-paved section of the Charles River bike path on the Brighton side between the North Beacon Street Bridge and the Arsenal Street Bridge. Approximately 40% of the bike path between those two bridges has just been re-paved (there was a work crew on-site), comprising the worst parts of the path, i.e., those that had very large bumps due to tree roots pushing up the asphalt. Beautiful! My daughter may not appreciate the change: she loves to yell "Bump! ... Bump! ... " both on the bike and in the running stroller.

On the Watertown side of the same stretch of the Charles River, however, was an ugly site: the street (Greenough Boulevard) was completely flooded -- about as bad as I had ever seen the flooding there, even though last night's rain was far from heavy. This occurred despite repair work during the last six months or so, which supposedly improved the storm drains on the north side of the Boulevard. Watertown Public Works crews were busy digging a large trench to clear up the mess and hopefully solve it this time, since the previous effort appears to have done more harm than good.

As of 5:00 pm today, Greenough Boulevard was still closed to vehicular traffic, although the bike path is open.

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